Man of My Dreams

[89layers]

I dreamed of you last night.
We spoke for a long while.
I felt your soft, sweet touch again.
 
I caught your gentle smile.
We walked along the darkness,
passing by familiar shadows.
Nothing seemed to show itself. 
Everything was clear.
 
I came into consciousness;
I knew you could not follow.
But there, again, I found you, 
like all the times before.
 
If it’s just a memory, 
I beg it “go away!”
But something stirs inside of me,
like it is something more.
 
If it were dead I’d bury it.
The issue would be done.
But like a seed I’ve planted, 
it’s sprouted in the sun
 
The gangly roots upon my heart, 
I want to tear it out!  
So, I close my eyes to sleep 
knowing the dream will reoccur.
 
This time, I think, if we should meet
I’ll say my piece 
A sweet goodbye
So that the love may gently die.

[kolemath]

Good final line. The shift to rhyme works as it seems to comment on the dream, shift in content ya know. A lot of abstraction and cliche. The root lines work. Good metaphor. Use that method of writing as a strategy for revising the poem?

Thanks for sharing

[89layers]

Thank you for your feedback.  I have realized that I do write in a lot of abstraction.  I believe that it is a mechanism to protect myself, in anonymity. I am going to look into your suggestions for possible revisions AND certainly future poems! This one was written feb 2015, after an actual recurring dream.

Good final line. The shift to rhyme works as it seems to comment on the dream, shift in content ya know. A lot of abstraction and cliche. The root lines work. Good metaphor. Use that method of writing as a strategy for revising the poem?

Thanks for sharing

[operadiva]

I enjoyed reading this a lot, and then reading it a few more times! I think the first stanza line 4 might be missing an 'r' in 'your' but maybe not! 

 The gangly roots upon my heart, 
I want to tear it out!  
So, I close my eyes to sleep 
but the dream will reoccur  I don't love the last two lines of this stanza, really the word 'but'.  maybe replace it with 'knowing' or 'accepting that', because i feel like the dream coming back is inevitable because it needs to be dealt with. As the reader, I got the sense that the dreamer wants to resolve the issue and the word 'but' changed the tone for me; more passive. especially after the aggression of tearing out the roots. (i love 'gangly roots' by the way!!!) 

I love how subtle the rhyming felt. I hate when rhyming feels really forced and unnecessary; this felt natural. The subject is very easy to relate to, and I liked the obscurity, but it could have been balanced with more specifics to make it feel more personal. 

Thank you for your time and energy

[89layers]

Thank you for your feedback. Very encouraging! And yes, I'm missing an "r." I've only been a member for a day or two now.  But I already enjoy all that I am learning from everyone.  Knowing and accepting do sound better.  I'll be doing my first rewrite ever, taking these into considerArion :

I enjoyed reading this a lot, and then reading it a few more times! I think the first stanza line 4 might be missing an 'r' in 'your' but maybe not! 

 The gangly roots upon my heart, 
I want to tear it out!  
So, I close my eyes to sleep 
but the dream will reoccur  I don't love the last two lines of this stanza, really the word 'but'.  maybe replace it with 'knowing' or 'accepting that', because i feel like the dream coming back is inevitable because it needs to be dealt with. As the reader, I got the sense that the dreamer wants to resolve the issue and the word 'but' changed the tone for me; more passive. especially after the aggression of tearing out the roots. (i love 'gangly roots' by the way!!!) 

I love how subtle the rhyming felt. I hate when rhyming feels really forced and unnecessary; this felt natural. The subject is very easy to relate to, and I liked the obscurity, but it could have been balanced with more specifics to make it feel more personal. 

Thank you for your time and energy

[DJesters]

I think the first 3 stanzas are begging for a little punctuation. Some periods planted throughout the poem would work wonders for the overall flow. I love the content, however, and feel like everyone has struggled with trying to get something "off their heart" that they wish wasn't there. I agree with Lizzie though! Can we fix the font size? Keep writing, 89! You have something good going here!

-DJesters

[TSPKNIP]

Hey,
I love the words and sentence-structure you used, makes the rather simple topic ( dreaming about someone) interesting. Here are my comments on sone lines:

I dreamed of you last night.
We spoke for a long while.
I felt your soft, sweet touch again. (Bit of a cliché, I would use other adjectives to describe it since "soft" and "sweet" are often paired together.)
I caught your gentle smile.
We walked along the darkness, (I would prefer a more figurative word for walking, sauntering maybe?)
Passing by familiar shadows.
Nothing seemed to show itself.
Everything was clear.

I came into consciousness;
I knew you could not follow.
But there, again, I found you,
like all the times before.

If it’s just a memory,
I beg it “go away!”
But something stirs inside of me,
like it is something more.

If it were dead I’d bury it.
The issue would be done.
But like a seed I’ve planted,
it’s sprouted in the sun

The gangly roots upon my heart,
I want to tear it out!
So, I close my eyes to sleep
knowing the dream will reoccur. (I would say: knowing that YOU will reoccur)

This time, I think, if we should meet
I’ll say my piece (I would say something like: I'll take my piece, or: break us in two, a broken piece")
A sweet goodbye
So that the love may gently die.

[18sawe]

Hi 89layers,

It's an interesting poem, with fresh approach to the well used subject of heartbreak. I've included some of my thoughts as annotations;

I dreamed of you last night.
We spoke for a long while. The phrase 'a long while' seems a little awkward, it just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the poem.
I felt your soft, sweet touch again. Nice emotive/sensual language.
 
I caught your gentle smile. 
We walked along the darkness,
passing by familiar shadows. This is great juxtaposition of the 'gentle' , 'sweet' and 'soft' representing lightness/happiness and 'darkness' and 'shadows.' Also the phrase 'familiar shadows' tends to imply that the shadows are troubles that plague the protagonist - great metaphor. 
Nothing seemed to show itself. 
Everything was clear. Amazing imagery.
 
I came into consciousness;
I knew you could not follow.
But there, again, I found you, There seems to be too many commas in this line, it breaks up the rhythm and seems like unintentional caesura. Perhaps remove the second comma.
like all the times before.
 
If it’s just a memory, 
I beg it “go away!”
But something stirs inside of me,
like it is something more.
 
If it were dead I’d bury it.
The issue would be done.
But like a seed I’ve planted, 
it’s sprouted in the sun
 
The gangly roots upon my heart, 
I want to tear it out!  Really nice language and metaphors!
So, I close my eyes to sleep 
knowing the dream will reoccur.
 
This time, I think, if we should meet
I’ll say my piece 
A sweet goodbye
So that the love may gently die.

I think the poem is a very well written poem, with great use of imagery, and metaphors and is very thought provoking. I don't think the poem needs much work at all! I hope I was useful to some degree!

Thanks,
Erica

[Franklin'sMan]

Hi. Much of this is very general, which means it's been said before and is cliche. I do like these lines:

I came into consciousness;
I knew you could not follow.

They're attention getting - right away we know a lot of interesting things about the speaker, their audience, and their relationship. They'd make a nice start. Then you could relate the dream in concrete images, ending with the speaker ending it with the figment/memory/spirit/whatever (you could play more on this ambiguity - how would a spirit move? how would a memory behave? Does he/she say something you had wished it would say? Does that suggest it's an expression of you hopes? -- etc.).

Lastly, you sometimes gave lines end-rhymes, sometimes not. For me, I find your rhymed lines would set an expectation, then all the many unrhymed ones would dash me. So use end-rhymes intentionally, not accidentally.

[headybeach]

Wow, I really think this poem is pretty powerful! I especially love the hints of longing that nearly every line carries. I'm a real big fan of abstraction and I can totally relate to using it as a sort of protective layer of a certain anonymity. However, I feel like some of your abstraction might work better if it were used in tandem with a reflective line or two that sets up the abstraction and its meaning, or even a line or two afterwards that sort of indirectly explains it for the reader. Almost like in elementary school where you would be shown a new, unfamiliar word and then given an example of its use in a sentence so that you could use context clues in order to figure out the word's meaning. If that makes any sense haha. I definitely really like this poem, very imaginative! Thank you for sharing!